Investing on cryptocurrencies for beginners

This post is for non-technical people and a short story about the beginning of my cryptocurrency investing adventure. Investing on cryptocurrency is somewhat counter intuitive that you cannot trust your own instinct. It is so weird that sometimes when the time you give your bet, prices will quickly drop down and you will have mixed emotions and be scared that you don’t know what to do, sell or buy more or curse the coin itself. I have listed some of my methods based on my experience but this doesn’t mean that these are good investment advices. Do not follow this and decide on your own (be a contrarian)! Because you might blame me or this article if you go broke on your cryptocurrency journey. I collected this from my peers and studied what other crypto-investors said instead on bashing someone on cryptocurrency groups in facebook.

Read news but be a contrarian. There is a saying in our class before that if you will be a contrarian, you’ll be successful in the business. As per my experience I have listened and read too much news and my intuition is that the ether will go up to $400. I looked at the chart and believe in it, then I bought a couple of ether. Suddenly the price of ether went down to $300 then $200. Second example about this was, when I heard about the segwit news, I immediately withdrew my bitcoin and converted it to different altcoins. Well this is somewhat better than my first experience.

Be patient. Don’t let your emotions eat your confidence. Most of you might knew about the crypto-massacre that occurred in the middle of June 2017. Before that, the price of Bitcoin and Ether were all-time high. I bought some in the middle of that crypto-craze ($2700+ per Bitcoin). Suddenly prices went down and all charts from different exchanges suffered from blood bath. After few days I converted my Bitcoin to other altcoins and even participated in ICO. Then after 1month, Bitcoin went back to its feet and recovered. My lesson from this experience was, be patient and have a long-game mindset. I remembered how my friend told me to be cool because no matter what, Bitcoin will rise again despite of the segwit news. Now I am just waiting for ether and other coins to get back to their original price when I bought my other portfolios.

Learn how to utilize your trading platform. For me, kraken.com is good enough but I will learn other platforms also. Before, I was so dumb that I always watch and guard the prices before I open some orders. Most of the time I missed the good price. Couple of days later I learned that you can set your desired price when selling or buying. Kraken will automatically execute your trades when it reaches your desired prices you set earlier.

Don’t be so greedy. There would be times when you’re happy and going well on your cryptocurrency investments. If you are buying you would wait for the lowest price then you will see it started rising again and if you are selling, you waited too long that you almost want to reach the peak price until you see it dropping again. Of course all of us wants to buy and sell at our preferred price. But there are times that it is better to act than wait. As I have learned from some investor, nobody perfectly strikes the peak of the price (I have experienced buying ether at lowest price once ;D ).

How will I know if the price will fall or rise?

Actually no one can predict this accurately. Well that is the most common question especially for beginners in cryptocurrency trading. The problem with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is, it is usually unpredictable and volatile. There was a time, in our group, we have a Forex trader who can analyze charts and have a tool that has live news feeds about crypto-market and stuff. Then there was an advise from professionals that appeared from her tool, saying there would be a huge correction and expect Bitcoin price to fall. That time the price was $9,600+- (down from $11,000). Yeah! after that advise, it only fell to $9220. What I am saying is, even professionals are having a hard time to analyze this thing. But there are some points where you can get information and take into account to so you can have an intuition:

Join cryptocurrency or bitcoin groups in facebook

Read news – this is easy, just google “Bitcoin” then click the news button. You can also set an alert for this.

Be aware of the upcoming forks – In recent forks (Bitcoin cash, Bitcoin gold), we experienced a huge spike up.

Sometimes, payday does matter. Like in Philippines, the most common payday is 30th and 15th day of the month. We have a feeling that people has the capacity to buy Bitcoin on payday.

It depends on the season. We experienced a huge rise during thanksgiving on the last week of November. Now we are waiting what’s gonna happen on christmas. People may sell-off(for Christmas expenses in Philippines) while first world countries will buy, who knows.

Launching of exchanges in some countries. Be very aware of this. Launching of exchanges in other countries, is a huge additional on the Bitcoin market cap.